A Speedy Red Cat

[alpal]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Strange huh?...compared to what? Perusing the many variations on the net it doesn't really look strange to me (but then I am strange ), it is a red nebula, arguing the toss about what shade of red is perhaps a little semantic? On my monitor the stars show pretty obvious, although somewhat subtle, colour differences with a lot of yellower fainter stars, I imagine the more distant stars are probably affected by the reddening like the nebula and the result is less blue stars?

Pure of heart, moi? nooooo, I'm a rebel...no darks and no flats remember

Mike

Yes Mike - but the nebula is so red that it looks like chocolate box colours &
the stars are bright white with so little colour.
It was only a suggestion.
I reckon it's not about scientific accuracy - it's about art.

cheers
Allan

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Is the lack of need for flats due to the smaller sensor Mike? Would a larger sensor need flats in your system?

Essentially, yes, the chip area is much smaller than the fully illuminated circle of this scope, the fully illuminated circle of the AG12 could handle a larger chip like the 8300 or even the Kodak KAI4022M but would need larger filters to prevent vignetting, the H694 chip is also quite uniformly sensitive across its area, it's a great camera IMO and I am really enjoying using it .

Originally Posted by alpal

Yes Mike - but the nebula is so red that it looks like chocolate box colours &
the stars are bright white with so little colour.
It was only a suggestion.
I reckon it's not about scientific accuracy - it's about art.

cheers
Allan

What? don't you like chocolate ...mmmmmm chocolate argllll driiibbble (Homer Simpson)

Fair enough and appreciate your opinion but personal preference also decides which chocolate one chooses too I guess besides, the stars are far from being only bright white on my monitor, so not sure what is going on there

Mike

[Star Catcher (Ted Dobosz)]

Lovely image Mike, grabbed in short time. That camera does very well indeed, especially without darks etc. The colour issue is an eternal one, with calibration all over the place for many monitors, not to mention glossy versus matte screens and lighting surrounding the monitors. I'll also throw in varying levels of colour blindness and personal saturation preferences. You can't win
Ted

[alpal]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

What? don't you like chocolate ...mmmmmm chocolate argllll driiibbble (Homer Simpson)

Fair enough and appreciate your opinion but personal preference also decides which chocolate one chooses too I guess besides, the stars are far from being only bright white on my monitor, so not sure what is going on there

Mike

You know something Mike,
I just had another look & I'm starting to like it more & more the way it is.

cheers
Allan

[ReaPerMan (Paul)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Essentially, yes, the chip area is much smaller than the fully illuminated circle of this scope, the fully illuminated circle of the AG12 could handle a larger chip like the 8300 or even the Kodak KAI4022M but would need larger filters to prevent vignetting, the H694 chip is also quite uniformly sensitive across its area, it's a great camera IMO and I am really enjoying using it .

Mike

You are echoing my problems. Whilst it's not an AG12 I have the 12"GSO mated with the ASA Wynne corrector. This gives me a great circle but I'm finding that I'm getting a lot of viginetting on the 11000M chip with the 2" standard filters.

Regards

Paul

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Star Catcher

Lovely image Mike, grabbed in short time. That camera does very well indeed, especially without darks etc. The colour issue is an eternal one, with calibration all over the place for many monitors, not to mention glossy versus matte screens and lighting surrounding the monitors. I'll also throw in varying levels of colour blindness and personal saturation preferences. You can't win
Ted

Hi Ted, yes the SXH694 is a beaut little beast, love it

Ah sigh... correct colours in astroimaging probably as many interpretations as there are for what's written in the Bible and Quran, depends on how you have been brought up, where you are or how you are feeling when you read them... then after a while you can't see beyond the interpretation you have settled on ...there, how's that for an analogy?

Mike

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by ReaPerMan

You are echoing my problems. Whilst it's not an AG12 I have the 12"GSO mated with the ASA Wynne corrector. This gives me a great circle but I'm finding that I'm getting a lot of viginetting on the 11000M chip with the 2" standard filters.

Regards

Paul

Yes, very fast scopes need a greater minimum filter size for the same chip size due to the broader light cone entering the image train.

The ASA corrector is excellent but I would suspect the fully illuminated circle of your scope would still be less than the 43mm diagonal of your chip then add the slightly undersized filters due to the broad light cone and you would have significant vignetting...still able to be flat framed out I would expect though...?

Mike

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by alpal

You know something Mike,
I just had another look & I'm starting to like it more & more the way it is.

cheers
Allan

Cool...I think this one is open to interpretation but I recon my reasoning certainly supports a deeper red (aka chocolate) overall view

Mike

[ReaPerMan (Paul)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Yes, very fast scopes need a greater minimum filter size for the same chip size due to the broader light cone entering the image train.

The ASA corrector is excellent but I would suspect the fully illuminated circle of your scope would still be less than the 43mm diagonal of your chip then add the slightly undersized filters due to the broad light cone and you would have significant vignetting...still able to be flat framed out I would expect though...?

Mike

Yep I can get rid of most of it with good flats but its a PITA. Still the 11000M has so much real estate that I can usually crop out what I need if necessary! Add to that the odd dead pixel and some line errors and the Sony looks very attractive I initially mated my rig with the QHY10 and that got some good results for a OSC but I would prefer a good mono.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by ReaPerMan

Yep I can get rid of most of it with good flats but its a PITA. Still the 11000M has so much real estate that I can usually crop out what I need if necessary! Add to that the odd dead pixel and some line errors and the Sony looks very attractive I initially mated my rig with the QHY10 and that got some good results for a OSC but I would prefer a good mono.

Yes the Sony chips are very clean but the mono's are in the smaller size range but the small pixles give you a good image scale while remaining quite sesitive and of course they can be binned too. Not needing to use callibration frames and only very little or sometimes no noise reduction during post processing makes imaging and processing a bit easier.

Mike

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Just by chance I was just trawling the amazing Chart32 teams collection of images and what do you know, they have recently imaged NGC 6334 The Cats Paw in scorpius. The amazing detail from the incredible 1" seeing and a 34" scope that they enjoy aside ... I was very happy to see that they came up with exactly the same colour palette as I did on this nebula, right down to the suble colour variations in each of the main nebula sections and the central subtly "coloured" area ...so.. red and red with just a touch of other colour it is I recon

Mike

[Poita (Peter)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Yes Mike - but the nebula is so red that it looks like chocolate box colours &
the stars are bright white with so little colour.
It was only a suggestion.
I reckon it's not about scientific accuracy - it's about art.

cheers
Allan

I'm running a FSI calibrated monitor here and there is plenty of colour variation in the stars. If you are on a Mac, there is a colour meter built into the OS, it is under Applications/Utilities/DigitalColorMeter.app and you can run over the image with the cursor and see the colour values of the stars in realtime. If they look white, then I would recalibrate your monitor.

Lots of subtle colour in the image too, wish there was a bit more resolution to play with.

With the X-Rite i1 Pro available for as little as $200 or so, and the colormunki even cheaper ($85! http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/X-Rite-Co...-/231277269031) , there really isn't much excuse not to run calibrated monitors these days.

[alpal]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Just by chance I was just trawling the amazing Chart32 teams collection of images and what do you know, they have recently imaged NGC 6334 The Cats Paw in scorpius. The amazing detail from the incredible 1" seeing and a 34" scope that they enjoy aside ... I was very happy to see that they came up with exactly the same colour palette as I did on this nebula, right down to the suble colour variations in each of the main nebula sections and the central subtly "coloured" area ...so.. red and red with just a touch of other colour it is I recon

Mike

Yes Mike,
you are proven correct.
The Chilean 32" pic is here:
http://www.chart32.de/images/phocaga...ngc6334-75.jpg

Actually you have shown more blue in your stars which is a nice touch.
They have a bit more slightly brown coloured reds in some areas &
if anything their reds are a little brighter.

cheers
Allan

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Yes Mike,
you are proven correct.cheers
Allan

Well, of course ...can't believe it was questioned so much really ...had to show an image from a pro observatory to be convincing...goes to show how unscientific and artistic our amateur pass time has become (not that that is totally a bad thing of course)

Mike

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Good quickie Mike!

Love the resolution from a 12" newt!

As usual, great image, nice stars and colour.

Cheers,

Justin.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by tilbrook@rbe.ne

Good quickie Mike!

Love the resolution from a 12" newt!

As usual, great image, nice stars and colour.

Cheers,

Justin.

Thanks Justin glad you liked it...funny, someone else thought it was out of focus

Mike

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Really like this Mike - very "natural" looking. Stars look okay to my eye.

Cheers, Marcus

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Really like this Mike - very "natural" looking. Stars look okay to my eye.

Cheers, Marcus

Cheers Marcus, I was hoping that was how it looked

Mike

[Rod771 (Rod)]

Another mini success Mike! Meow! Lovely details for a nights run, well done!

Thanks for sharing the Chart 32 image, I asked my wife if we could move to Chile, she said I wouldn't like the drive to work

[DJT (David)]

Great image Mike. I like the fine detail and as commented earlier, the variation in the different areas is interesting.

This thread is pretty good as well..picking up some interesting stuff.

Cheers